A Break in Shade by Robert Carr

Image by PN art intern Danielle White, @yourdanidoodles.

Associate editor Andrew Walker on today’s bonus poem: “A Break in the Shade” is a poem in two parts, both lush in their own right: the first composed of lyrical verse that dances seamlessly over the tongue of the reader before dropping into the stark image of a band kid in a bully’s armpit. The turn is anything but sour, and reminds the reader that even the harsh sunlight cutting through soft shade can still warm our cool skin.

A Break in Shade

I’ve named the boulder
shaped like the corpse of a horse
Quartz, dappled with lichen
and moss. In the shadow
garden, I water

the bloated belly, drooping
coleus, tender bishop’s
hat, snowy-edged
hosta I split with a blade.
The hose coupling

clacks over stone, a tap
like the case of a childhood
clarinet, dragged along
the wall of an institution
called school—

I’m head-locked                     sniffing

hairy hydrangea

sweet armpit                of the bully –

  slack leaves
leading me
to watering—

the horsy bulge                                   in a bad boy’s jeans

and the shade—

percussive                   retreating                             wood

wind

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Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth, published in 2016 by Indolent Books and The Unbuttoned Eye, a 2019 collection from 3: A Taos Press. He was selected by the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance as the recipient of a 2022 artist residency at Monson Arts. Robert's books and publications can be found at robertcarr.org.